With the inculturation of Catholicism into the American
mainstream, does an accommodation for
cohabitation already exist in the Catholic Church?

Pastoral Issues
in Cohabitation

By Michael P. Orsi

(HPR November 1997)

■ In a recent homily I presented what contemporary research suggests regarding cohabitation and its effect on the life of a subsequent marriage. I noted first that the data indicate that couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to divorce than couples who do not.1 Secondly, more recent studies contend that cohabitation before marriage is associated with reduced sexual exclusivity after marriage.2 And finally, cohabitation “is no substitute for marriage since such arrangements are far less stable than marriage, with only 16% lasting more than five years.”3 I was also quick to point to the wisdom of our Church’s constant teaching which rejects cohabitation outside of marriage as an acceptable arrangement for Christian living.4

As people were leaving Church many commented, “I haven’t heard that in years!” In this essay I will propose two related reasons as to why they haven’t heard it. I will also propose some suggestions designed to limit the increasing growth of the number of cohabiting couples, now estimated to be 50% before all first marriages.5

Philosophical and Cultural Reasons

The first reason that little is heard about the negative effect of cohabitation is philosophical and cultural. It ultimately has its roots in the Enlightenment which extolled the virtues and goodness of the individual. Naturally these thinkers presumed behavior would be constrained by the biblical precepts that helped form Western Civilization. An obvious example of this optimistic view of humanity is found in the words of the Declaration of Independence which proclaims the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While these words are certainly true, removed from any restraining context they can very easily lead to license (or the modern excesses of Libertarianism). This reading-out-of-context along with the emphasis on John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of Utilitarianism and its focus on individual rights, effectively freed persons from traditional structures and encouraged what we know today as “alternate lifestyles.”6 Now, the sole criteria for moral propriety resides with the autonomous individual’s perceived needs, which are usually based on a solipsistic pleasure principle. Hence, the present chaos of moral relativism and the erosion of traditional moral structures.

The cultural ramifications of this unbridled liberalism came into full flower in the American cultural revolution of the 1960s. As the former constraints of family, church, and school began to crumble, the vacuum was filled by consumerism which began to set the standards for “the good.” "This caused the baby boomers to be socialized very differently from preceding generations: their whims and needs dominated the marketplace of American Capitalism, which made the individual feel free to choose even their churches. The churches therefore realized that if they were to grow and, more importantly, to survive they needed a cultural fit and accommodation to the market.”7 Wade C. Roof’s A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journey of the Baby Boom Generation8 supports this contention with impressive data that suggests that baby boomers feel more free than former generations to break with their inherited faith and to shop for new ones conducive to their own liking. Roof also points out the increase of those who have a self-styled or cafeteria-style approach to their denominational creed.

Sociologist Benton Johnson’s November 1996, address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association reported “that conservatives, just like liberal Churches, have modified their public stances to accommodate changing culture, without changing an inch on their basic theological views.”9 Commenting on this, Martin E. Marty writes that the cultural threats that get overlooked are changes that have already affected religious culture itself.10 The study indicated a sharp decrease in preaching since 1960 on such topics deemed evil by theologically conservative Protestants such as smoking, drinking, dancing, and divorce. The question that the study forces us to ask is, will abortion pale as a preached about moral evil in the future? More to the point, is it reasonable to assume that with the full inculturation of Catholicism into the American mainstream, does an accommodation for cohabitation already exist in the Catholic Church? A case in point, and perhaps one that begs the question, is the contention that the American bishops were reluctant to encourage a stronger stance from the pulpit in opposing candidates who supported partial-birth abortions during the 1996 elections for fear of losing the Church’s tax-exempt status.11

In our acceptance of the preceding interpretive framework it would seem that, although not explicitly, our first reason for not preaching or teaching on the evils of cohabitation is that church leaders, themselves products of the environment, no longer deem it economically wise or politically correct to do so.

Theological and Spiritual Reasons

The second reason people have not heard about cohabitation involves the theological and spiritual, and it is twice as pernicious as the first. The soft theology and ambiguity that now inhabits our churches, universities, and seminaries has its roots in Protestantism. With the Reformers insistence on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through Scripture alone, the mediating community (for Catholics, the Magisterium) has lost its authority to the individual’s own feeling of right and wrong. Truth is now defined as “how I see it,”12a concept that has found a home in the modern Catholic academe.13Although never officially enshrined in Catholic doctrine, many have wrongly interpreted the Second Vatican Council’s documents on Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (#16)14 and The Declaration on Religious Liberty (#3),15which spoke of the primacy of the individual’s conscience.16 Many failed to place these documents in the context of the constant Church teaching that a Catholic conscience must be formed in accord with the authentic Magisterium.17 This misunderstanding has led to a multitude of magisteria, professional and lay, which has produced the watered-down cafeteria-style Catholicism that now exists in the Western World. Historical Consciousness, which claims that truth is time-conditioned, has spawned teleologies such as proportionalism, consequentialism, and intentionality that now dominate Catholic higher education and have filtered down to the people in the pews,18 or at least to the 28% of Catholics who still attend Mass on a regular basis.19

The effects of personalized religion limits the preaching of both the natural law and supernatural revelation which would specifically challenge certain lifestyles. In this world-view no one is immoral; everybody is okay, and we are all going to heaven. Traditional Christian principles are certainly alien to the hearer, and they may be dangerous for the preacher to proclaim. Yet, if people are not told and reminded of the Truths of the Faith and the consequences of not living them, the salvation of souls is at stake. Because of this system failure, “In 1990, 2.9 million couples lived together without marriage—up 80% from 1980 and 454% from 1970.”20 The data clearly indicate that the failure to preach the moral wrongness of cohabitation is at least partially responsible for its exponential increase.

Solutions

What I recommend here to stem the proliferation of cohabitating couples is incremental and long-term.

First, it is necessary that pastors accept some degree of personal and corporate responsibility for the present crisis. In doing so, they can be a catalyst for reversing it.

Second, pastors must have the courage to clearly preach what the Church teaches. This should be reinforced by placing quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the parish bulletin.

Third, pastors and catechists should realize that marriage preparation begins long before Pre-Cana. The Pontifical Council for the Family states that “remote preparation” includes infancy, childhood and adolescence, and takes place first of all in the family and also in school and formation groups as a valid assistance to the family.21 This is of vital importance since, by the time a couple comes seeking marriage, their moral stance and practice, for the most part, are already determined. Therefore, pastors and religious educators must work with parents in shaping the moral attitudes of children. Robert Coles’s The Moral Intelligence of Children22 can be a valuable resource for parents who must teach and encourage their children to lead moral lives. Coles agrees with Aristotle, that “example is the best teacher.” Also of great value for parents and educators is the 1995 document The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality 23 by the Pontifical Council for the Family.

Fourth, Catholic Colleges and universities should quickly implement The Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities (1990).24 It is important that those professors who are grounded both philosophically and theologically in Catholic teaching be recognized as such and given a mandate from the local bishop. Their adherence to Splendor of the Truth (1994) which presents the foundations for Catholic Moral Theology based on objective truth must be a sine qua non for this designation. Not to do so will only lead to further confusion among Catholics and a further secularizing of Catholic education.25

Fifth, the value of courtship should be promoted. Many of the chastity programs now available can help couples to see courtship as an important time to learn about one another’s character and the disciplining of sexual desire. It is also a time to explore some of life’s biggest questions “Where are you going? Who is going with you? How—in what manner—are you both going to go?”26

Sixth, for those couples now cohabiting and seeking sacramental marriage, prior moral ignorance and present goodwill must be assumed. To demand that couples separate may emotionally and economically be more than they can endure, and it may effectively lose them to the life of faith and grace that is rightfully theirs.27 Pastors, however, should see their request for separation as a moment of grace to fully nurture them in Catholic doctrine before the wedding takes place.28This does not preclude the strong suggestion, perhaps more palatable after catechesis, that a more subdued wedding ritual be planned in order to avoid scandal and/or mixed messages to others. Liturgists may want to work on this type of ceremony.

What Would Make These Changes Possible?

1. Bishops using their teaching authority, would set diocesan policy and engage the clergy in on-going dialogue and education in pastoral implementation of this policy.
2. All involved in pre-Cana ministry would be educated in the Church’s teaching and in pastoral approaches to these situations.
3. All aspects of family life education should be strengthened so that “remote preparation” within the family is supported and encouraged.

For baby boomers and their children, Generation X, cohabitation is probably ex post facto and in many cases too late to correct. Nevertheless, in a recent study cited in the article “Generation X Keeps the Faith,” polling provides some helpful data by the National Opinion Research center which found that members of Generation X attach more importance to religion than their parents, and that 47% of Generation X members said Church teachings were important in making personal decisions compared to 41% of the baby boomers.29 This finding may augur well as an avenue to reclaiming their descendants. The old adage goes “not to act is to act.” The time now seems ripe to reclaim our Christian moral heritage for the Third Millennium. ■

NOTES

1 Guarting-Gibbs, P.A., “The Institutionalization of Pre-Marital Cohabitation: Estimates from marriage license applications, 1970 and 1980,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 48 (1986): 2, pp. 423-433.

2Forste, R., and Tanfer, K., “Sexual Exclusivity among Dating, Cohabiting and Married Women,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58 (1996): 1, pp. 33-47.

3 Himmelfarb, G., The De-moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

4 Catechism of the Catholic Church. The United States Catholic Conference. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, MO: Liguori Publications, 1994.

5 Forste and Tanfer, pp. 33.

6 Bork, R.H., Slouching Towards Gommorah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. NY: Regan Books. Harper Collins, 1996.

7Kosmin, B.A. and Lachman, S.P., One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary America. NY: Harmony Books, 1993.

8 Roof, W.C., A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journey of the Baby Boom Generation. SF: Harper, 1992.

9 Steinfel, P., Beliefs, The New York Times, January 25, 1997, p. 10.

10Marty, M.E., “Where do You Draw the Line: Negotiating With Modernity,” The Christian Century, 114 (1997): 2, pp. 38-39.

11 McHugh, J.T., “Catholics and the 1996 Election,” First Things, 70 (1997), pp. 15-17.

12 Ashley, B.M., Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian. Braintree, MA: The Pope John Center, 1985.

13 Kosmin and Lachman, pp. 268-269.

14 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, (text cited from Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Gen. Editor Austin Flannery, O.P., Costello Publishing, New York, 1992). pp. 903-1038.

15 Second Vatican Council, The Declaration on Religious Liberty, (text cited from Vatican Council II, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, Gen. Editor Austin Flannery, O.P., Costello Publishing, New York, 1992). pp. 799-812.

16 Reeves, T.C., The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity. NY: The Free Press, 1996.

17John Paul II, The Splendor of the Truth, Origins, 23 (1993): 18, pp. 293-336.

18 Ratzinger, J., “Relativism: The Central Problem of Faith Today,” Origins, 26 (1996): 20, pp. 311-317.

19 Reeves, p. 63.

20 Ibid., p. 65.

21 Pontifical Council for the Family, “Preparation for the Sacrament of Marriage,” Origins, 26 (1996): 7, pp. 99-108.

22 Coles, R., The Moral Intelligence of Children: How to Raise a Moral Child. NY: Random House, 1997.

23 Pontifical Council for the Family, “The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality,” Origins, 25 (1995): 32, pp. 529-552.

24 John Paul II, “The Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities,” Origins, 20 (1990): 17, pp. 367-376.

25 Marsden, G.M., The Soul of the American University: From the Protestant Establishment to Established Non-Belief. NY: Oxford University Press, 1994.

26 Kass, L.R., “The End of Courtship,” The Public Interest, 126 (1997), pp. 39-63.

27 Code of Canon Law, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1993, nos. 213 and 843.

28 Ibid., no. 1063.

29 Briggs, D., “Generation X Keep the Faith,” The Courier Post, January 30, 1997, p. 20.

Father Michael P. Orsi was ordained for the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey. He has authored or co-authored four books and more than 100 articles in 15 journals. He has served as Assistant Chancellor, Assistant Vicar for Pastoral Services, Director of Family Life Bureau, a coordinator of Pope John Paul II’s visit to New Jersey, a member of The Institute for Genomic Research at the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of New Jersey’s Advisory Council on AIDS. Father Orsi holds a Bachelor of Arts from Cathedral College, a Master of Arts and a Master of Divinity from St. Charles Seminary, and a Master of Science and a Doctorate in Education from Fordham University.